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Russia
Geography, Climate, and Environment Social Demographics Government and Politics Repression On December 22, 2015, armed Russian police raided the offices of a pro-democracy movement founded by the outspoken Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which was part of a criminal investigation into the former tycoon and his associates. After Putin freed him in 2013 after he spent a decade in jail for fraud, Khodorkovsky accused Putin of leading Russia into a 1970's Soviety-style period of stagnation. Investigators linked the armed raids to allegations of oil theft and money laundering. Foreign Affairs Syria Russia, like Iran, was a firm ally of Bashar al-Assad and intervened militarily on his behalf against anti-government forces in the civil war, beginning with air strikes in northwestern Syria on September 30, 2015. In mid-November 2015, Russia responded to the ISIL-claimed Metrojet Flight 9268 bombing in Egypt by increasing its own bombing operations within Syria, using the Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic bombers for the first time. On November 24, a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 aircraft was shot down by a Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jet in an incident thought to be the first time a NATO country shot down a Russian plane in half a century. The incident triggered a confrontation between Russia and Turkey, prompting Russia to further bolster its military posture throughout the wider region; Putin also imposed economic sanctions on Turkey. Major world powers agreed on a road map for a nationwide ceasefire in the upcoming years; in mid-December 2015, Russia made it clear to Western nations that it had no objection to the Syrian President stepping down as part of the peace process, softening their publicly stated staunch backing of Assad. Ukraine In response to Russian involvement in Ukraine, the West imposed financial punishments on their economy. After the European Union extended economic sanctions against Russia until the end of the summer 2016, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on 34 individuals and entities on December 22, 2015 as part of its efforts to pressure Russia for its intervention in Ukraine. These sanctions were not designed to roll back unless Russia fully implemented its commitments under the Minsk peace agreement, which had been established in September 2014. By the end of 2015, President Putin expected trade relations with Ukraine to worsen, but claimed that Moscow would not impose any sanctions on Kiev related to its trade deal with the European Union. = Law Enforcement and Crime Economy Russia's economy was forecast to shrink by 4% by the end of 2015, its sharpest contraction since the global financial crisis, as a result of Western sanctions imposed over the Ukrainian crisis, falling oil prices, and a weakening rouble. The crisis hit ordinary Russians hard, cutting real incomes, pushing up prices of day-to-day products, and halving their buying power in the West. With a ban on direct flights to Egypt and Kremlin sanctions on Turkey in December 2015, two of their favorite holiday destinations were pushed farther out of reach. Culture Infrastructure Russia was composed of aging Soviet-era infrastructure, in which safety requirements were often ignored. As a result, gas blasts were relatively common in Russia. For example, at least five people died after a gas explosion ripped through an apartment block and set it ablaze in the southern Russian city of Volgograd on December 20, 2015. Just a week prior, a fire had swept through a psychiatric clinic in a village south of Moscow, killing 23 people. In one of the biggest such incidents, 58 died in March 2004 in the northern city of Arkhangelsk in a sabotaged explosion that came two days after Vladimir Putin won re-election and several weeks after a suicide bombing killed 41 Moscow subway passengers.